1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for supporting address interaction between a first entity and a second entity which use different addressing modes with address types in different specification languages and with address values of different semantics, the method including the step of converting an address type with an address value according to the first addressing mode to a corresponding type of the other specification language, to a converter for address interaction between a first entity and a second entity, and to a computer system.
2. Discussion of Related Art
To implement distributed computer systems in software, object-oriented modeling is increasingly being used as an architectural principle.
Such a software architecture of a computer system is the CORBA architecture (CORBA=Common Object Request Broker Architecture), which is an important component of the OSA architecture (OSA=Object Service Architecture), specified by the Object Management Group (OMG). Objects conforming to this specification, henceforth called "CORBA objects", are specified by means of the specification language CORBA IDL (IDL=Interface Definition Language). All types of such an object are also specified in this language, i.e., in CORBA IDL.
For the area of network management, an object model has been standardized in an OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) standard (Management framework for open systems interconnection, ITU-T Recommendation X.700, 1992). Its objects, henceforth called "OSI objects", are specified in the specification language ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation). All types of such an OSI object, including the address type used for addressing, are also specified in this language, i.e., in ASN.1.
During address interaction between OSI objects and CORBA, problems arise: The CORBA architecture and the OSI architecture use different addressing concepts. The OSI architecture uses a logic address (full distingushed name), while the CORBA architecture uses a physical address.
The invention starts from the usual procedure for address interaction: An address type defined in ASN.1 is converted to a correspondent IDL address type, which then transmits the address value to another object unchanged, e.g., via a CORBA infrastructure. If the correspondent CORBA address value is needed at, for example, the target object or during transport over the CORBA infrastructure, it will be determined by means of a central service.